Process Safety Integrity/Technical Process Safety

Jacobs Consultancy has a range of capabilities that are unique among our competitors. The expert consultants in our multi disciplinary team have backgrounds in a range of industries, with previous experience in both regulatory and operational environments.

Clients receive the benefit of our detailed knowledge of regulatory requirements as well as our track record in the practical application of techniques to identify, assess and implement effective solutions to control safety risks.

Jacobs Consultancy can provide a wide range of process safety and risk services for new developments as well as operational installations, and has capability in the following areas:

Fire, explosion and toxic consequence modelling

COMAH safety case preparation and support

Occupied buildings risk assessments

SIL compliance (IEC 61508 / 61511)

HAZOP and HAZID leadership and training

Hazardous area classification

DSEAR and ATEX compliance

Technical Training

Failure mode effect (and criticality) analysis

Quantified risk assessment

Frequency assessment and HAZAN

Pressure relief and blow down assessments

Emergency planning and emergency preparedness

Functional safety assessments

Fire safety management

Fire systems auditing and engineering

Flare and combustion safety

With our capability and expertise we have been involved in a range of services to support our clients’ process safety requirements from overall management and supervision of full safety case submission through to small technical studies and investigations to support plant operating modifications and periodic reviews.

Jacobs Consultancy’s specialists have the required experience to address these issues and help you to ensure acceptable risk to occupants within process plant buildings in a cost-effective manner, whether it be a turn-key project or assistance with specific aspects.

This can include:

Process plant siting and layout

Blast overpressure analysis

Fire and explosion protection

Control room design

Occupied building risk assessment (OBRA)

Jacobs can also provide advice on the requirements of the legislation and associated guidance and ongoing assistance and support to ensure that systems and procedures are put in place to secure future compliance with legislation and guidance.

Jacobs Consultancy provided support to the front end and detailed design of a polyolefin facility to be constructed in Saudi Arabia. The support included hazard identification, consequence assessment, occupied buildings studies, availability modelling and integrity level determination.

The threats from explosions, pressure bursts, fire and toxic gas releases should be considered in the structural design of process plant buildings and also on the process plant siting and layout. Reports by the Advisory Committee on Major Hazards (ACMH) emphasise the importance of addressing the risk to occupied buildings.

For COMAH top tier sites, safety in occupied buildings should be addressed as an integral part of the safety report. At lower-tier sites, risks to people in occupied buildings should be identified in the Major Accident Prevention Policy (MAPP).

Client 1For 10 years, Jacobs Consultancy has worked with a client on their high hazard site in Teesside, providing support and advice in a wide number of areas.
The responsible care manager commented: “I have used the services of [Jacobs]… to provide an expert resource for our COMAH safety report and more recently an IPPC application. I have always been very pleased with the performance of this team, who have worked hard and with great commitment on all the projects they have undertaken”

Client 2Our client operates a number of top-tier COMAH fuel terminals in the United Kingdom. The fuel terminals each handle gasoline, kerosene, diesel and additives, with one site also handling ethanol. Jacobs Consultancy was engaged to:

review, justify and update as necessary the frequency basis for each major accident hazard scenario, and

evaluate the current consequence model to ensure it is consistent with best practice.

Our specialist knowledge, understanding and experience of the competent authority requirements within the safety report assessment manual guidance, the Buncefield final report and industry best practice were key to providing advice and support that is commensurate with the latest requirements of the competent authorities in terms of current best practice and learnings from incidents.

Client 3Jacobs undertook pre-front end engineering design (pre-FEED) on behalf of a client for a gas storage project based in Ireland. Part of the scope of the pre-FEED project is to complete a preliminary quantified risk assessment (QRA) for the proposed design to indicate whether the individual and societal risks are within the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) tolerability criteria.

For the preliminary QRA a selection of worst case scenarios was considered, rather than all potential scenarios, to focus the scope of work. A hazard identification (HAZID) assessment identified the major locations and causes of loss of containment, and the potential quantity of material involved, considering the expected temperature, pressure and duration of release. From the representative set of 15 potential loss of containment events identified from the HAZID, the risk to onsite and offsite populations was estimated. The assessment considered risks from different operational modes and the effectiveness of automated primary isolation.

For more information on our capabilities in this area, please contact us.